Genuinely what other explanation is there? You could literally sign a two way player for similar or even better production. 

For your $16 million contract lol, a full 1/10th of the cap 

And it’s not like he just resigned for the same amount, he 4x’d his salary, and for a full 4 years lol

Is he only shooting 3s?

No, they took 5 and they gave 2 back.

So in the end they lost 3 1st round pick (in the middle of Garnett prime)

What happens to those picks? Do They just disappear and all the other teams move up in the draft?

The main aspect of the Joe Smith deal was that there was documented proof (in the form of a separate contract) detailing the secret agreement. Unless somebody has a saved email or something saying they’re circumventing the cap, the league has no reason to act and no ground to stand on for punishment. 

No, you might get someone competent and we can’t have that!

Well, it creates a precedent that teams without cap space can have agreements with players to sign for the minimum, and get paid back later.

Just can’t have a written note saying “this is for the purposes of circumventing the cap”.

the bucks got trent on an under the table deal while giannis was here to try and juice their contention window. thats circumvention and they should be punished for that. Its that simple.

There is something funny about a move that destroys a franchise for over a decade and the root cause is some motherfucker named “Joe Smith.”

you’d be hearing it a lot more if you followed baseball the last 10 years

It’s both. They did a stupid handshake deal with trent last year and then they unnecessarily honored that deal. 

Burries is a Rich Paul client. That’s the answer.

Please have a seat next to the Kangz and Zach LaVine.

you’d be an upgrade and they’ll be hiring soon.

If this is a handshake deal then it’s by explicit approval of the owner. Which means the GM was probably promised some extra years to keep silent.

They don’t have their pick next year, so in theory they should be trying to win games. Practically, that’s almost impossible with the current state of the team.

All this for Gary Trent Jr. I can’t man

the contract is a no trade clause lmao

The four years should go nicely with Dame’s stretched money.

Adam Silver has lost control. Might be time to go

After how the clippers got caught and seem to be unlikely to face any punishment, why wouldn’t they?

As a Raptors fan, I’m all the more pissed. We missed out on a possible repeat, and now might have our future tanked if the contract is voided and our players are now upset. The NBA made this bed by blatantly ignoring cheating, and now everyone but the cheaters suffers

Well at that point you could easily argue a player took a pay cut to stay with a contender, which is not uncommon and shouldn’t be punished.

Why?

People are allowed to take pay cuts. LeBron is likely going to sign for a vet min or close to (with MLE help) and he’s obviously worth much much more.

The problem comes when someone signs a vet min with the promise of getting more later, to get onto a capped out roster and then later get more with bird rights

Also Gary really wasn’t even that good when he did sign with the bucks originally.

No, because he still kind of sucked even then. One tricky pony, can’t defend a lick. Very average on a good day, and people just assumed nobody wanted to pay him a long term deal so he signed with a contender to try to boost his value.

I HATE THE WAY THAT YOU WALK, THE WAY THAT YOU TALK, I HATE THE WAY THAT YOU DRESS

I fucking loved Norman Powell man, swapping a known quantity, homegrown talent for a dice roll smh

The league has no aspirations of punishing teams.

If there’s not a paper trail, or multiple trustworthy witnesses to coberate them willingly circumventing the cap, there’s nothing to be done.

Absent that (Ie a team being dumb as fuck and getting into a perilous venture with someone they don’t trust), punishing the bucks here will open up an obscene can of worms

I mean this is about as blatant as it comes, this wouldn’t be them making an example of Milwaukee it would just be addressing the open cap circumvention.

I mean Minnesota lost multiple first round picks when they got caught doing this

Yeah but Bobby Portis had on court value.

The argument is they got value out of the below market contract they paid him the last few seasons, which is unfair.

The argument is that they made a wink-wink deal to pay him less previously so they could use the cap space with a promise they’d take care of him later.

I can’t fathom it. A 2 year deal, maybe. This isn’t even tradeable.

Also likely they move quicker, since this isn’t some secret back door thing that took a while to discover. They did this in broad daylight.

Yep. Absolutely no push back if they make an example out of Milwaukee. Clippers and Balmer is another beast Silver isn’t willing to confront

Silver fucked us with the Bogdan trade even when we had Giannis

It was always a circlejerk. This sub is all circlejerks.

Yep. The NBA has to take the results of the investigation and then win in court against one of the richest people in the world. It needs to be completely buttoned up.

I mean why wouldn’t they? If the owners don’t run it, who does? Reddit? 😂

It’s a business arrangement that’s been known to the world for an octade now.

(I made up a word that means 80 years.)

That’s not proof, yeah its clearly enough proof for the public perception but not in any legal setting which is what the league would have to go through.

Curious that Gary Trent is getting heat when this was literally what Morey promised Harden on the Sixers(albeit not following through on his end of the deal).

there’s a 0% chance the only punishment they would receive is the contract gets voided. either they won’t get punished or there’ll be additional ramifications (losing picks, things like that)

now, maybe Horst thinks any potential punishment is worth it to maintain the relationship with Klutch, but that’s a ballsy fucking risk when the last team to do it lost 5 1sts and multiple executives got suspended